


dwell and welcome

by vegetas



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, terror bingo 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21652081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegetas/pseuds/vegetas
Summary: "china plate" - endearment, from the cockney rhyme "china plate/mate"bingo fill: a great peace descends
Relationships: Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 9
Kudos: 73
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019)





	dwell and welcome

**Author's Note:**

> forgive all historical, biographical or just general inaccuracy - sometimes a b*tch just wants to be Indulgent(TM)
> 
> unbeta'd - i live and die by my own sword~

> ..by all rights mine, white star 
> 
> in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving
> 
> from its earthwards journeys, here where there is 
> 
> no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,
> 
> when there was snow), you are my right  
>    
> 
> 
> _you, therefore_ | _reginald shepherd_

  
  


Much later, when it is all through, Edward lays the newspaper flat against the table between them and points to the etching crammed between the columns with the neat filed edge of his nail. 

  
“Do you remember the buffalo?” 

Thomas keeps both hands firm on the silver carafe, eyeing the stream as it fills Edward’s cup. He waits till the milk at the bottom and the coffee swirl into the color of Edward’s handsome camel hair coat and then draws away to set it on the trivet and take his seat at Edward’s elbow. It’s how they always sit when they sit together, taking up their corner. 

  
“I can’t say I recall,” Thomas answers, shaking his napkin out into his lap. 

“It was while we were hauling. The last few miles,” Edward replies with a slight shift of his body in the chair, stepping over the grueling details like it’s nothing more than salt spilt on the floor. He folds his knee neatly over the other. “You were asleep through most of it.” He looks at the drawing, tracing its hatched humped back with the same finger.

“They were _wood_ buffalo,” he says, tapping the beast squarely once before reaching for his coffee at last, the steam clouding around his face. 

Wood buffalo, of upper Canada, he illuminates, sipping. Heavier than their southern cousins. Denser. A herd hundreds strong, streaming across the wild road between the ruins of Fort Providence and Fort Resolution. Black woolly things that walked around them without even seeing them. Perhaps the beasts imagined them to be nothing more than trees; gnarled driftwood. They couldn’t have seemed like much more. 

He tells Thomas how they changed the very atmosphere and humidity of the air with their breath, how they lumbered on, carving through the world, parting it like waves against the prow. How everything stank of buffalo for miles after and then a new scent spread on the roof of Edward’s mouth - the kind of bloody, loamy smell of the loose box when the mares foaled. 

It ends with the carcasses they find. The wolves, the old weird gods of that forsaken place, looming over the ridge - bloody maws unimpressed, bored and full - and the laughter of crows and terns blown off the water to pick over what was left.

They cut the tongue from the grizzled cow with its deformed leg, and siphon what they can from the cored remains of the calf. Edward uses the flat of his hand to demonstrate, his butter knife moving through sinew and around joints with a realistic tension. 

_Tongue_ , Edward says, still disbelieving, shaking his head at his empty palm. _That’s considered a delicacy. They cooked beaver tail for us at the fort as well… It wasn’t terrible..._

It’s a fine Sunday morning, and they are taking their typical breakfast in the garden - Sherman and Joseph have removed the leaves from the eating table before heading off to service and carried it outside and set it under the quince tree because it is Thomas’ favorite and the cherry makes him sneeze on warm green days like this. 

Thomas is sure to be sitting on the side of Edward’s good ear, nodding his head along. When he sees the sun dappling through the leaves touches on Edward’s dull graying hair he’s pleased with its politeness - Edward is sensitive to changes in the temperature, overheating quickly and getting colder twice as fast.

_The weather may be the one thing you cannot make agreeable, Thomas_ \- was it Francis who had said that? It's been a long time. 

“You’ve not told me this before?” Thomas asks with a frown. He scrapes damson jam against his toast with neat strokes, concentrating. Something about it is so terribly familiar. Edward, the long walk, things left for them. It nags somewhere, a crawling itch where he sometimes feels tingling numb, or his breast, or the place in his head which throbs more often than not. 

“I shouldn’t think so,” Edward says, taking up his paper again, flicking it straight. “I’d remember telling you such a drama." He smirks, rueful this morning - or as rueful as Edward manages to look when he means to. 

“What does your article say?” Thomas asks, courting the issue the way he knows Edward likes in an attempt to shift the weird discomfort settling about the subject. It must take a saintly patience, Thomas knows, to indulge the peevish frailty of his memory for all these years. 

Edward stops looking at Thomas love-eyed long enough to scan the print and then slyly reaches in his pocket for his readers. 

“Oh, they’re all but hunted it seems,” Edward sighs, blinking behind the lenses. “Such a waste,” he mutters, adjusting the frames over his ears. 

Thomas can only grimace, his mouth flooding with a sudden, unnatural taste. He wishes to drop the knife and bring his hand to his forehead, or stare at the carpet to collect the thought. His feet are prickling in his shoes beneath his chair, on the short grass and paving bricks of the lawn.

_Only very tired_ , he is usually so sure to say, so Edward doesn’t fret. This time he is silent, his thoughts racing. 

_Easy_ , Edward might reply if he could peer inside his ear and see them all wheeling about. _Easy, steady my angels, steady my darlings -_ like when he’s playing with the dogs and Thomas scolds him for exciting them while lighting the candles on the dining room table. He watches the shivers pass down their backs, their tails twitching in sheer delight to please. He can only tolerate it; he shares the same compulsion to be kept by the man balancing biscuits on their noses. His devotion is a constant distraction; the dogs snap up the treats, the matches break in his fingers and he curses under his breath, damning his tremor.

_Do you remember chewing and passing it into my weak mouth?_ _Whatever it was. Buffalo, or not. Always from your own, like your nestling. How you would prod it back with your tongue because it was gentler than your finger on the sores. How you would wipe my lips with your sleeve. I remember only the oily smell of your hair - unruly and thick as that buffalo’s mane - your matted beard - how noble, how princely and tender you were in that wretched place. Do you remember coming to my side to whisper good morning?_ _Always your pet, your heart, your treasure - always the insistence that I could not be anything but cherished - anything but your own - no matter how sick and ugly -_

“I will never understand your taste for burnt things, little honey-cake-horse,” Edward chuckles, eyeing at him with one eyebrow arched. It breaks him from his private frenzy and Thomas remembers himself, glancing down at the over-done end he is still piling preserves on.

“Old habits,” Thomas says automatically, setting the knife atop the crock’s mouth quickly and taking a thoughtful bite, crumbs falling gracelessly. “There was always a burnt piece left when the table cleared, so I took a fancy to it,” he explains between crunches. The jam is sweet and filmy on the center of his tongue when he works it around the missing place a tooth should be. _Your best charm_ Edward claims, because he can only see it when he’s really laughing.

“Well, old habit or fancy or not,” Edward says decidedly skeptical, watching him finish dabbing at his lips with a corner of his napkin. “You can have any kind of anything you’d like. You ought to know by now that _I_ would see to that. My stomach certainly wouldn’t tolerate it...” He shakes his head again, dismayed on Thomas’ behalf. 

  
Thomas looks up at him as he swallows a small mouthful of coffee. He tilts his head in consideration before he meets his gentleman's dark eyes over the news-page. After a moment of deliberation it sinks lower and then flattens against the table between Edward’s hands. Carelessly he brings his fingers to touch his face, his trembling steadying when he brushes Edward’s cheek as though he has a lash caught there. 

“I rather like my little fancies,” he says pointedly, smudging his thumb at the corner of Edward’s mouth. “Besides, who bothers to notice a bit of burn when it’s served on a good setting?”

He traces over the laugh lines hidden under Edward’s beard, the ones that twitch against his cupped palm when he huffs.

“Finding a bit of burn now, are we?” Edward echos, shy and all the sweeter for it. Thomas purses his lips and winds a lock of Edward’s hair around his finger, lets the wave frame his aging face. 

“Not at _all_ , china plate,” he marvels, staring at the shadows Edward’s thick dark lashes cast. He forgets what he was going on about, brushing the end of Edward’s handsome nose lightly with the pad of his finger. He pets his chin where the whiskers have gone steely and uneven over the scarring, strokes his jaw with his knuckles. 

  
  
He gentles every new brittleness he feels, leaning across the table and confiding a kiss in Edward’s mouth. 


End file.
